BIGD organised a Seminar on Migration at the BIGD conference room on 29th December. Dr. Hasan Mahmud, Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in Qatar presented a paper from one of his recent researches titled Why Do Migrants Send Remittances? A Sociological Explanation in the seminar. In his presentation Dr. Mahmud explained social science discourses on migration and development that emphasise migrants' altruism or self interest as the determinants of their remitting practices, which is countered by alternative explanations focusing on social culture and structure. Recognising current approaches unsatisfactory and inadequate, he showed a critical realist approach.
His study begins with the empirical manifestations of migrants' remitting practices, but looks at deeper levels of social reality (the actual and the real) in identifying the determinants. It investigates remitting practices among Bangladeshi migrants in Tokyo and Los Angeles. While confirming the centrality of migrant family in remitting practices in the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) perspective, it goes beyond by including how internal family relations and external social relations collectively determine migrants' remitting, he shared. Dr. Mahmud also said, the study would advance the existing knowledge of migrants' remitting by incorporating both migrants' agency and social structures embedding remitting practices. The presentation was followed by a question answer session. Dr. Shanawez Hossain, Research Fellow of BIGD introduced the presenter with participants and Md. Harun Or Rashid, Research Associate and Seminar Coordinator of BIGD, moderated the Seminar.